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52
Les Prairies's artists
JAN KEMPENAERS
Spomenik #1 (Podgaric), 2007. Collection Mu.ZEE, Ostende.
© Adagp, Paris 2012.
KILUANJI KIA HENDA
Kiluanji Kia Henda seeks to convey, at a remove, the history of his
country, destroyed by civil war and colonisation, and to construct
fictions that explore as much the past as the future. Lunda In The
Sky with Diamonds I represents an Angolan landscape destroyed
by diamond mining, an economy which the Angolans themselves
miss out on even though it is they who extract the stones from
the mine. Balumuka (Ambush) shows an open-air transit zone
in Luanda, the Angolan capital. It is a graveyard for old objects,
machines, and fragments of old monuments. The fortuitous
juxtapositions re-enact historical scenes: colonial heroes rub
shoulders with Angolan sovereigns and military weapons. These
epic, rather grotesque scenes are evidence of the difficulty the
country has in preserving its heritage. Redefining The Power
III (with Miguel Prince) is a theatrical style staging of our
relationship with history and mocks the importance attached to
monuments and statuary in Angolan public space. Taking empty
colonial-era pedestals from which the statues were removed at
the time of Angolan Independence, the artist invited performers
to occupy the place vacated by the coloniser. These improvised
heroes, formerly colonised people, adopted comically satirical
attitudes of power. Although Kiluanji Kia Henda has realized an
ephemeral dream, it is above all a call for the possibility of a new
way of remembering.
C. P. tr. J. H.
Born in 1979 in Luanda (Angola), where he lives and works.
Jan Kempenaers is best known for his large-scale
panoramas of industrial and urban landscapes in
Europe, the United States and Japan. In his fascination
for the hybrid nature of today's landscapes, Kempenaers
interrogates the 18th century notion of the 'picturesque'.
His series Spomenik (2007) is an attempt to capture
what remains of the monuments (spomenik) that were
erected under Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate
communist resistance to Nazi occupation. These
monumental sculptures with their powerfully expressive
geometric forms are to be found in strategic and
symbolic locations. They are constructed in long-lasting
architectural materials like concrete, steel and granite.
After the confusion of the ethnic wars that followed the
break-up of Yugoslavia many of these formally diverse,
Brutalist monuments were destroyed, while others
were simply abandoned. These strange memorials are
baffling to recent generations. Stripped of the trappings
of social and political ideology as well as of their
commemorative function, they raise the question as to
how far, after "the end of history", an 'object' can accede
to the status of pure sculpture in its own right.
N. L. tr. J.H
Born in 1968 in Anvers (Belgium), lives and works in
Gand (Belgium).
Balumuka – Ambush, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria
Fonti, Naples.